Arraignment:John Albert Gardner III pleaded not guilty to the rape and murder of Chelsea King and the assault to commit rape on a second woman. A status conference was set for March 9.

Charges: Gardner was arrested on suspicion of rape and murder in connection with 17-year-old Chelsea King’s disappearance. In filing charges today, prosecutors may include one or more special allegations that could make him eligible for the death penalty if convicted.

Search for Chelsea King

The county public defender will represent the man suspected in the rape and murder of Poway teenager Chelsea King and has assigned two attorneys to the case, a strong indication that prosecutors will seek the death penalty, according to a courthouse source.

John Albert Gardner III, 30, a registered sex offender from Lake Elsinore, is scheduled to appear in court Wednesday afternoon for a hearing that may force prosecutors to reveal what led to his arrest and announce whether the charges will include one or more special allegations that would make him eligibile for the death penalty.

The 2:30 p.m. court appearance will be the culmination of a weeklong ordeal that has gripped the nation and led more than 6,000 volunteers to look for Chelsea, a 17-year-old Poway High School student. She disappeared Thursday after going for a jog in the Rancho Bernardo Community Park.

Authorities discovered a body in a shallow grave Tuesday near Lake Hodges, about a half-mile from where Chelsea had parked her car. San Diego County Sheriff Bill Gore said there is a “strong likelihood” that it is Chelsea and that the body would be positively identified on Wednesday.

Police are also investigating a vandalism incident at the Rancho Bernardo home of Gardner’s mother and stepfather. Someone using red spray paint wrote “Chelseas blood is on you” and “move out” on the garage door of their townhouse on Matinal Road about 5:40 a.m., San Diego police Sgt. Ray Battrick said. The words were painted over a couple hours later.

Brent King, Chelsea’s father, struggled to maintain his composure Tuesday night as he stood before thousands at a somber candlelight vigil, just hours after authorities told him they believed the body found near the lake was probably his daughter’s.

“One of the nicknames that I’ve always called my daughter is ‘my angel,’ ” Brent King told those who gathered at St. Michael Catholic Church in Poway. “She’s my angel forever.”

He added: “Keep her spirit alive for us.”

A man then yelled from the crowd, “We love you!”

King, with his wife, Kelly, by his side, replied: “We love you, too.”

Sara Muller Fraunces, a spokewoman for the King family, declined to say whether the parents would be at the arraignment. She directed people to visit the “Chelsea King Search Center” Facebook page, which will be changed today to “Chelsea’s Light,” for family statements and memorial service details.

Fraunces welcomed the community’s desire to help but said plans to use that energy for some purpose has not yet been identified.

“I am sure the family hopes to do something with that for good but we are just not there yet,” she said. “I am hoping that people can just go into a holding pattern for a day or two.”

Gore said investigators discovered the body shortly after 1 p.m. Tuesday about 10 feet from a tributary that leads to the lake — an area that had been searched extensively and is about a half-mile from a parking lot where Chelsea’s car was found six days ago. He said a shoe had been recovered previously in the general area.

The Medical Examiner’s Office confirmed that the body was removed from the area later Tuesday.

Gore said the girl’s parents were devastated when he informed them.

“They were holding out hope, as we all were, that we would find Chelsea alive, and this was our worst fear that we would find her as we did today,” he said.

Shortly after Gore’s announcement Tuesday, two Poway High students stood outside the school crying and hugging each other.

“I had so much hope for her,” said Leandra Lyons, 15, a sophomore. “I was just hoping by the end of the week we’d have some good news.”

Nicole Belanger, 16, a sophomore, said she was in shock.

“Just to hear that it’s one of our own people at our own school, it could have been any of us,” she said. “I’ve just got to take this as God had a plan for her and took her for some reason.”

Throughout the campus, students wore orange T-shirts, hair ribbons and yarn bracelets in honor of Chelsea. Some bracelets had sayings attached that were taken from quotes posted by Chelsea around her house. The color-coordinated tribute was organized by students via Facebook, MySpace and text messages forwarded among friends.

At the Chelsea King Search Center in Rancho Bernardo, the day’s events elicited similar emotions.

“It’s heartbreaking,” said Dawn Davis, senior case manager for the Laura Recovery Center, a Texas-based organization that helped coordinate the local search. “We all hoped and prayed that Chelsea would come home to her family.”

The center attracted about 1,500 people each day for the past four days, some from as far away as Oregon. They were sent out in teams of 20 to search ravines, orchards and other places in a 10-mile radius around Lake Hodges.

The investigation into Gardner widened in recent days as authorities linked him to a December assault and probed whether he had a role in last year’s disappearance of an Escondido teenager.

San Diego police Capt. Jim Collins said Gardner has been connected to a Dec. 27 attack on a female jogger in the same park, but it was not through DNA evidence. He declined to say how the link was made, but said they were working with police in Colorado Springs, Colo., where the jogger lives.

Over the weekend, the San Diego police crime lab had rushed to test a DNA swab taken from the elbow of the victim of the December attack. It did not have Gardner’s DNA, only the victim’s, Collins said.

The 22-year-old jogger told officers she had used her bare elbow to knock her assailant in the face, possibly breaking his nose.

“We thought we could get something good on that, but unfortunately not,” Collins said.

The DNA sample was not tested earlier because it was considered an attempted robbery, which is not as high on the crime lab’s priority list as other violent crimes, Collins said. As of December, the lab’s DNA unit was dealing with a backlog of about 500 cases.

Gardner is also under investigation for possible involvement in the case of Amber Dubois, a 14-year-old who disappeared while walking to Escondido High School on Feb. 13, 2009.

As recently as November 2009, Gardner registered as a sex offender at an Escondido address two miles from the school.

People living at the Rock Springs East condominiums said they were shocked to learn Gardner had lived in their building.

A woman with small children who lived next door to Gardner and recognized him from photos posted online over the past few days said he lived with a blond woman and two toddlers.

The former neighbor, who didn’t want to give her name, said teenagers, both male and female, often came over to play video games at Gardner’s apartment. She said she could hear the loud games through the walls.

She and other neighbors said Gardner had moved out about six months ago.

In 2000, Gardner was convicted of a forcible lewd act on a child and false imprisonment after he took a 13-year-old neighbor girl to his mother’s home in Rancho Bernardo. The girl accused him of repeatedly punching her in the face and touching her private parts.

A psychiatrist who interviewed him in that case said he would be a “continued danger to underage girls” because of the lack of remorse for his actions.

Prosecutors initially charged Gardner with more-violent sex crimes that could have resulted in a sentence of more than 30 years because the terms would have been served consecutively. He was sentenced to six years in prison as part of a plea agreement and served five years before he was released in September 2005. He completed probation in 2008.